This book starts off with a fact. The main character is Susie Salmon is dead. You learn about her r*pe/murder in a fashion that doesn’t make you wish you skipped breakfast. And then the rest of the novel beginnings. As the reader, you get to hear how everyone’s life unfolds after the tragic death. You even learn about the murder walk free. But you also learn about what happens after death and how dead people effect every single one in ways that can flip your world upside down.
The creation of Susie had less background information than a normal novel, and I believe this was strategically planed. She is dead. You earn a little about what she wanted to be, who she liked, and one or two outfits. The rest was up to us. The author leaves it up to us to describe how we see the dead. It doesn’t completely reveal the mystery of death that every little kid has wondered about.
Personally, I enjoyed most of this book. The beginning was captivating and the perspective was brilliant. The second sentence set the mood for the rest of the book, “I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1978″(p.10). When you tell a story from the perspective of a dead person, they can see everything, but you get their emotion and connection to the earth. It is a fascinating choice to have as the voice of a novel and in this instance it really worked!
I disliked how slow the book got. About halfway through, it was like the car was stalling. Nothing very eventful happened. Then the end had a few shocking moments, but some those were confusing. To me, it seemed like someone else picked up this book and wrote some parts. The style, use of language, and perspective was the same, but the excitement was just not there.
Despite this, I still enjoyed this book and never found myself dreading to pick it up. I believe that is because of the strong, yet hidden, theme. “Plans change” (p.399) but it will be okay. It relates to everyone’s life in some way, and can teach us very important skills. The salmon families went through many ups and downs, but at the end they are all together, and happy. Even if they don’t know it, Susie is watching over them.
Since this novel took up the challenging idea of starting off with murder, instead of that being the climax, you learn a lot about every other character. We learn about Lindsay and Buckley, and the type of people they grow into. Their caring, crazy personalities show through almost as much as Ruth. Just from a few sentences we can tell that Ruth is a outgoing, forward-thinking girl who wants to help everyone who deserves it. A reader can easily picture this family, who has to struggle to move on with their lives, growing as individuals and as a whole.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading, because parts may be hard to get through but it can be worth it. For this reason I would rate it, drum roll please,
Claudia’s Book Blog 